In modern dairy farm industry there are continuous research and development activities in order to improve the efficiency of various activities such as machine milking, which, inter alia, involves increased milk yield and reduced milking time.
A major trend in this respect is an increased degree of automation of the various activities. For instance, machine milking may be performed by milking robots in a completely automated manner. Such an automatic milking system may take care of milking, feeding, milk inspection, milk sampling, animal traffic, etcetera in a large area wherein the dairy animals are walking about freely. This implies that the user of the system, i.e. the farmer, can leave the barn for many hours if everything is progressing appropriately.
Some activities are nevertheless performed more or less manually. For instance, if a particular dairy animal is under a treatment, receiving pharmaceutical drugs or is to be rubbed with an ointment or a salve, this particular animal has to be found for manual inspections and/or treatments. In a large area farm where the dairy animals are walking about freely it is a hard and time consuming work to find the animal of interest. Further, when the animal is found it may be difficult to keep the animal still during the treatment or examination.
Further, some treatments ought to be performed in connection with milking.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,790,047 issued to Golan depicts a system for marking a cow with a visible marking indicative of a treatment to be carried out on the cow, comprising an identification tag located on the cow and bearing a unique identity code for remotely identifying the cow, and a database containing for each cow in a heard a corresponding identity code and a treatment code relating to a treatment to be carried out on the cow. The cow passes through a paint spray station en route between a milking parlor and corral, said station identifying the cow and including different colored spray guns responsive to the treatment code for marking on the cow a visible marking uniquely identifying the treatment code.
Said U.S. Patent does not, however, disclose how nor where to find a particular animal of interest. Further, the system with spray guns seems to be impractical if just one or a few particular animals are to be treated.